Culture » March 30, 2007

Boomsday: Bankrupt Satire

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Libertarians are a strange lot. Their targets often seem reasonable; their solutions myopic and partial. So it goes with Christopher Buckley’s Boomsday, a sub-Swiftian sendup of the looming threat of an overwhelming federal deficit, set in the carnivorous confines of D.C.’s wonkscape.

Cassandra Devine is a heroine for our spin-crazy times–or actually, for five years from now, when the first wave of Baby Boomers will be eligible to retire, an event dubbed “Boomsday.” A “strategic communicator” for excessive executives, pesticide manufacturers and mink-farmers, by night, the twenty-something blogger imbibes Red Bulls and Ayn Rand in equal measure and sets her sights on the greed of those determined to make her “Generation Whatever”–Gen W–peers foot the bill for their golden years. Her modest proposal? Offer senior citizens a reprieve from estate taxes in return for their voluntary suicide at retirement–a publicity ploy that she terms a “meta-political device.”

Cassandra’s stunt, supposedly meant to prompt discussion of responsible government spending, spins out of control when it hits the whirling fan of media attention. Her cause is helped along by the ministrations of her P.R. flak boss, support from an ambitious senator, and the high-profile disapproval of an unctuous pro-life minister who heads up the Society for the Protection of Every Ribonucleic Molecule (SPERM). Cassandra’s excitable blog followers stage riots at gated communities, laud her call for a tax revolt, and cheer on her campaign for resource-hogging “wrinklies” to “voluntarily transition.” Elaborate hijinks ensue, and she ends up on the lam, a refashioned rebel with a cause, and a Blackberry.

Buckley–son of the Buckley of National Review fame–favors a reductively Freudian brand of character development. Cassandra’s fury stems from her Beemer-driving father’s decision to invest her college fund into his tanking dot-com. Both the self-indulgent liberal senator, Randolph K. Jepperson, and his nemesis, the rotund and foppish evangelist, Gideon Payne, seek power as a response to the disapproval of their overbearing mothers. Such devices allow Buckley to generate sympathy for even his most unlikable characters.

When not following psychological compulsions, Boomsday’s dramatis personae are driven by generational dictates. Born in 1952, Buckley slags his own generation as unrepentant hypocrites, hooked on perks and entitled to the point of narcissism. As Cassandra’s boss, Terry Tucker, explains, “Everyone sells out. Boomers just figured out how to make it an entire industry.” But this doesn’t let the Gen W crowd off the hook. Borrowing from the theories of psychologist Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me, Buckley sketches the rising cohort as cynical yet strangely easy to manipulate. Late in the novel, as Jepperson launches a run for president based on his appeal to the twenty-somethings, Cass advises him to adopt “Why Not?” as his campaign slogan. Soon after, bolstered by focus groups, she tells him the best way to court the youth vote is to tell the president to “shut the fuck up” in the midst of a campaign debate. Are readers supposed to swallow the idea that all it takes to woo the iPod crowd is a shrug and the staged authenticity of an expletive?

Still, while his characters’ motivations might be simplistic–as befits a writer convinced that each of us operates primarily from self-interest–Buckley can’t be faulted for lack of inventiveness. His baroque plotting largely manages to entertain while indicting the usual suspects: insatiable businessmen, corrupt priests, spineless politicians, amoral lobbyists and strong-arming pimps. A former speechwriter for George Bush Sr., and editor of Forbes FYI, Buckley is a whiz with snarky acronyms, and has an insider’s understanding of media’s levers and buttons.

Buckley’s publishers share his interest in the well-chosen publicity op. Boomsday is the first product of a boutique imprint at Hachette Book Group called Twelve. The conceit is that it will publish only one book a month, devoting extraordinary resources to promoting each title. “We strive to publish the singular book, by authors who have a unique perspective and compelling authority,” says Twelve’s mission statement, “Works that explain our culture; that illuminate, inspire, provoke, and entertain. We seek to establish communities of conversation surrounding our books.” And who will be speaking to whom to what end? A look at the first few authors tells the story: along with Buckley, there’s Christopher Hitchens holding forth on the poison that is religion, and John McCain on “great decisions and the extraordinary people who made them.” In other words, Twelve is home to the self-styled maverick, the blowhard contrarian beloved by the corporate media. Bloggers will have a field day.

Which brings us to the crux of the matter: Boomsday is not just another hard-working satire, struggling to keep up with the absurdity of the era. It’s a stunt within a stunt, a book about making a splash that itself is a cannonball into the deep end. You could even call it a “meta-political device,” designed to re-prime the pump for a debate over Social Security privatization–a gambit that failed spectacularly despite Bush Jr.’s best efforts. Seen from that perspective, it just becomes tiresome.

Buckley depends on the most dire prognostications for Social Security, which, according to moderate and progressive economists, is not “in crisis” at all. Of course, he is exaggerating for effect: his vision of a bankrupt administration is an expression of his own disappointment with conservatives’ current direction. In October, he expressed as much in a Washington Monthly article titled “Let’s Quit While We’re Behind”:

Who knew, in 2000, that “compassionate conservatism” meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief? Who knew, in 2000, that the only bill the president would veto, six years later, would be one on funding stem-cell research? A more accurate term for Mr. Bush’s political philosophy might be incontinent conservatism.

According to Buckley, then, the solution is some mixture of financial rectitude and parental responsibility: the government shouldn’t promise benefits it can’t afford to deliver, and the older generation should realize they’re depending on a smaller generation of youngsters to foot the bill for a bulge of retirees. Sounds nice, but it’s an outlook shaped (excuse the reductive character assessment) by Buckley’s up-market milieu.

Simply cutting federal spending won’t help the bulk of Americans, including many Boomers, who aren’t worried that they may have to pay estate taxes, or whining–like Cassandra–that they couldn’t afford to go to Yale. Instead, policy priorities need to be shifted to support those citizens who are caring for their own aging parents, struggling to pay for education, maxing out their credit cards to pay doctor’s bills, sitting on depreciating property and wondering about the stability of their jobs. They are the ones smacked around by the invisible hand, not lifted by it.

The publisher’s PR materials and Boomsday itself make references to Miami Herald columnist and comic novelist Carl Hiaasen as a model satirist–the kind of conversation-starter that they hope to emulate. But Hiaasen is not just a humorist, he’s a humanist. While his heroes and villains are caricatures, his protagonists are real people, dealing with issues like job loss and child support.

Like Buckley, Hiaassen might well target egotistical yuppies who expect government handouts without thought for the next generation. But he’d be equally hard on high-handed D.C. pundits who don’t feel like paying taxes and can’t see why they should be forced to.

Chris Buckley, I’m from Miami. Carl Hiaassen is a hero of mine. And you, sir, are no Carl Hiaasen.

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Jessica Clark is a writer, editor and researcher, with more than 15 years of experience spanning commercial, educational, independent and public media production. Currently she is the Research Director for American University’s Center for Social Media. She also writes a monthly column for PBS’ MediaShift on new directions in public media. She is the author, with Tracy Van Slyke, of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media (2010, New Press).

Libertarians........The other white meat.
" Any Jew who supports the fascist-Stalinist type of legislation against anyone HAS NO RIGHTS AND IS FAIR GAME FOR ANYONE. IF EVERY ADVOCATE OF THOUGHT CRIMES LIKE YOU WERE PUBLICLY KILLED THAT WOULD BE A GREAT THING. IF WE NEED A Posted by texasindependent on 2007-04-21 14:50:52

If the state jailed all hatemomgers you would be serving several life sentences. Your advocacy of jailing people for their views is no different than Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. You prove that the left is the major danger to our liberty and that people like McCarthy were right to clean Communist shit like YOU out of the government. Any Jew who supports the fascist-Stalinist type of legislation against anyone HAS NO RIGHTS AND IS FAIR GAME FOR ANYONE. IF EVERY ADVOCATE OF THOUGHT CRIMES LIKE YOU WERE PUBLICLY KILLED THAT WOULD BE A GREAT THING. IF WE NEED A "HOLOCAUST" TO STOP UNTERMENSCHEN COMMUNIST SHIT LIKE YOU FROM FALSELY JAILING PEOPLE THEN BRING IT ON ! Far from stopping fascism, you have endorsed and promoted it and the more that this type of legislation gets pushed, the more will be the backlash against the vile degenerates who promote it. No other group including the hundreds of milllions of victims of communism-socialism or even the millions of victims of US imperialism has called for jailing people for the views. Even if Zundel was motivated as you said, he has every right to promote his views. But then YOU are a liar who habitually misrepresents revisionist views, Zundel's is the honest one of trying to combat what he sees as the mass blood libel of his people by the phony "holocaust" accusation. You, Chicago Colostomy Bag Hemorrhoids Face, are a totalitarian liar and piece of shit. I wish you ill. All future insane postings from you will be answered as follows: "ASKED and ANSWERED." The exact way we handle vexatious repetition liars in legal depositions.Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-02 09:41:34

Zundel is a known active fascist and anti-semite. His sole purpose is to agitate against Jews in order to create a dangerous, untenable, and threatening situation which will result in their mass physical harm and consequent pressure to leave their homes. This is deliberate and intolerable. All people deserve to live in peace and dignity with their neighbors free of threat from vicious incitement. Zundel's slanderous campaign of hatred is designed to bring harm to innocent people. He deserves to be in jail for what he is doing.
By jailing Zundel, the government sends the message that hate and attempts to incite violence against whole groups will not be tolerated. Society has the right and the obligation to protect itself and its citizens.It is hard for rights conscious Americans to understand this because WWII was not fought on their soil. Europeans who have personally seen millions upon millions of people killed, maimed, interned, expelled, displaced by war, and orphaned have no desire to repeat the experience. They should be praised for taking actions to prevent a repeat of this situation. Americans talk incessently about strategies of combating prejudice. Europeans and others like the Canadians take concrete and effective steps on behalf of this worthy goal.
The other thing is that it is important to stem the tide of the fascist threat to democracy. It exists everywhere. The threat is from the far right not the left which respects democracy. Let Zundel and his disgusting ilk rot in prison where they belong.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-04-02 07:24:05

By the way, there are no blood libel laws in civilized countries and hebes are as much subject to criticism as anyone else and that doesn't constitute mistreatment. Jews scapegoat all the time and can be scapegoated in return. All fair and legal. Of course, 90% of Jews here aren't really Jews, see Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe, they are Khazars, the whole AshkeNAZI group are not semites but Khazars. So even the relatively recent term of Jews just in the last few centuries is inaccurate as is antisemitism unless referring to Arabs. BTW, advocating fascist censorship and thought crime laws
is a very strange way of trying to "stop fascism." You are a very stupid person if you really believe that.Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-01 13:52:48

Chicago, I just refuted you again on the bisexual thread. Zundel NEVER violated ANYONE'S rights. Zundel's rights WERE violated by the use of STATE force which is the only way rights can violated. Neither the US Bill of Rights nor the Canadian Charter says that if Jewish assholes do not approve of something that that violates their rights. No wonder the average JewIQ is 99 in Israel and less here.Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-01 13:47:10

I am only trying to stop fascism in its tracks before it gets to far. Canada doesn't need Zundel. He is a shit. He violates the rights of Jews to live in peace and not be scapegoated, libeled, or mistreated. Let him suffer. Who told him to go and mess with the Jews in the first place?
What is initiated force. In the Libertarian world you will need force to suppress the resistance of the poor who won't even be able to walk down the privatized streets. Maybe a "faith based" charity will subsidize the cost but only if they turn their lives over to the Lord.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-04-01 06:55:18

Booeyfuckley is NOT for decriminalized drugs, he SUPPORTED the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws in NY and has never recanted that
support. His opposition is NOT to the mass murder we call war but only jumping ship because it's going badly. Unlike YOU, i've never advocated the fascist form of socialism and actively supported states
founded on legal racism like Israel. A libertarian social order means the total absense of initiated force where people are put in jail for opposing
some official dogma. Even Chomsky wrote me in 89 that laws in Canada trying Zundel were fascist to the core, and you COLOSTOMY
BAG HEMORRHOIDS FACE Chicago ADVOCATE SUCH LAWS. That
makes you a HARDCORE FASCIST.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-31 13:54:18

BIll Buckley is becoming more of a libertarian with his advocacy of legalized drugs and his opposition to war as a government racket. Still like most libertarians he is way on the right. The lib in libertarian is an illusion. To enforce a libertarian social order would require massive state repression. Scratch a Libertarian find a fascist. Such an irony!! But look at fascist sympathizer BM who claims to be a "libertarian/objectivist" whatever that means. I suspect there are many other such individuals as well.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-30 21:36:33

Jessica, Carl's overrated and overhyped and NONE of the Buckleys have EVER been "libertarians." Ever. Read Master Booeyfuckley's many attacks on Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard. The Master who likes to inhale his own gas and was always a Big Government Conservative going back to his Commonweal artice in 1952. ALWAYS.
I do have to admit that the paragraph you directly quote from Junior
is entirely accurate. And I will concede that many libertarians and Objectivists ARE boring, just like many lefties. Don't quit your day job yet.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-30 11:46:30